


Shore Leave

by chaletian



Series: In Which The Enterprise Is Like A Village [12]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-16 06:16:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/858804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaletian/pseuds/chaletian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a difficult couple of months on Enterprise. There've been crew deaths, near-calamitous alien encounters (the last one a planet where the population thought they were gangsters circa 1920, which was dumb any way you looked at it), and the ship mysteriously running low on the ingredients for pie. They're all on edge. They're all expecting the worse. And then an away team beams down to a new class M planet with Mr Spock in command, and they check in sounding cheerful.</p>
<p>Suspiciously cheerful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shore Leave

It's been a difficult couple of months on Enterprise. There've been crew deaths, near-calamitous alien encounters (the last one a planet where the population thought they were gangsters circa 1920, which was dumb any way you looked at it), and the ship mysteriously running low on the ingredients for pie. They're all on edge. They're all expecting the worse. And then an away team beams down to a new class M planet with Mr Spock in command, and they check in sounding cheerful.

Suspiciously cheerful.

oOo

"I mean, he's not usually that cheerful, right?" Jim asks Uhura, who raises an eyebrow.

"Captain," she says, in that _tone_ , and he pulls a face.

"Yeah, yeah, fine, I didn't ask," he says, like he doesn't know that they've got a thing  
(like not _everyone_ knows they've got a thing), because the bridge isn't personal (and how, precisely, after a couple of years, is anyone supposed to pretend that the bridge isn't personal? That they don't all know pretty much every thing ever about each other?). "But come on, people. They sound _cheerful_." He sighs unhappily, and flicks the toggle of the comm on his chair. "Kirk to Sickbay."

"Sickbay here."

Jim cheers up a bit himself. Bones sounds like he's in a bad mood.

"I'm concerned about the away team," he says.

"I heard the check in," says Bones. "They sounded happy. What are you thinking? Alien mind games? Virtual reality?"

"Maybe some kind of spores," offered Jim. "I heard the Demeter had a thing with spores."

"Goddamn spores," says Bones sourly, and Jim nods. Goddamn spores indeed.

"I'm gonna send another team down," he says, and gestures to Sulu. "Pick your crew," he says. "Standard environmental suits."

"Aye, sir," says Sulu, in a voice that means, 'Gotcha; spores; I'll take a sword.' Jim likes that voice. It's a voice he can trust in lieu of going down himself, which he's trying to limit (apparently, for some reason, the brass hats in San Francisco had been a little concerned about the reports going back, and had made some stringent remarks about regulations and captains not leaving the ship to peer at any damn planet that takes their fancy. Or something).

So Sulu and his team go down. They check in. It's beautiful down there. Great weather. Oh hey, the indigenous culture has something that's basically ice cream. Spock chips in and suggests sending the crew down for shore leave.

"Definitely spores," says Bones.

"I'm going down," says Jim.

oOo

So, the not-quite-ice-cream apparently is actually delicious.

"Tastes like strawberries," says Chekov beatifically, and Jim would totally bust a gut laughing because the kid's got blue not-quite-ice-cream on the end of his nose, except he's too busy resisting the urge to take off the environmental suit hood thing (and who, precisely, designed these things and were they actually going for the total idiot look?). The sun is warm and there's a breeze and everything is bright and cheerful and the natives appear to be having some kind of festival that involves music and dancing and not-quite-ice-cream, but Jim has learnt to expect the worst.

"Test that," he says to Ensign Dawson, pointing to the cup in Chekov's hand. "It's probably hallucinogenic."

"Well, why would we be hallucinating too?" asks Dawson. Jim narrows his eyes. Looks like they've got to her as well. He stabs at his tricorder, and waves it over Chekov as Miya saunters up and takes a swipe at the navigation officer's nose. Then they're being all flirty and although Jim is (naturally) gratified that Chekov appears to have taken the Tale of Young Jim Kirk and Meredith McKenna In Sixth Grade to heart, he mostly fears it's further proof that the spores (or whatever) are wreaking their fearful havoc.

"Mr Sulu is currently engaged in an apparently popular native custom which involves throwing small projectiles at a local hard-shelled nut," says Spock, appearing at Jim's elbow. He's not smiling, but it's a not smiling that comes as close to smiling as Jim has seen in a while. "I believe he intends to win a prize." He looks thoughtful. "It occurs to me to wonder whether Lt Uhura would appreciate a fibre-stuffed leonine children's toy." He disappears again, and is replaced by Bones, who's carrying his environmental hood in one hand and a cup of not-quite-ice-cream in the other.

"You know," he says, "this isn't half bad." Jim sneers, but Bones is too busy sniffing the air. "Smells just like home," he says cheerfully. "Hey, did you know they've got some kinda coconut shy back there? Sulu just won a stuffed tribble."

"I thought you were still on the ship," says Jim.

Bones shrugs. "Well, everyone was saying how great it was, and Chekov mentioned there was pie. You know, we haven't had pie for forty-six days."

"Forty-five," corrects Jim automatically, but Bones just flaps an elbow.

"Whatever. It's a long time without pie." He looks at Jim properly. "Why the hell have you still got that ridiculous hood on? The air's fine."

"But the spores…" says Jim desperately.

Bones raises an eyebrow at him, which is always _hilarious_ when it happens to other people. "Don't be an idiot, Jim. There aren't any spores. We've done a full work-up of the atmosphere."

He wanders off towards the not-quite-coconut-shy.

Jim takes off his stupid environmental suit hood.

oOo

They spend four days in orbit around the not-quite-ice-cream planet. When Jim reluctantly makes the decision to move on, they're all a little pink, a little giddy, a little sick of not-quite-ice-cream, and a little blissed out.

"That was awesome," says Sulu, shifting from impulse power to warp speed.

"Definitely awesome," concurs Chekov, who was totally seen making out with Miya behind the tent with the fortune-telling bovine (Jim puts that one down to the Tale of Young Jim and Ella Johansson In Ninth Grade).

"It seems unfortunate that the inhabitants were not interested in joining the Federation," says Spock, and everyone nods.

They continue along their trajectory, and Jim leans back in his captain's chair, stretching out luxuriously. His nose is peeling, he's got so many grass stains on his uniform he's going to have to avoid Crewman Graves for the rest of the voyage, and there's a very real possibility he might actually vomit from the last-minute one-for-the-road-that-became-seven-for-the-road glut of not-quite-ice-cream, but he hasn't felt this good in a while.

"Space exploration rocks," he says.

oOo

Back on the planet, the not-quite-ice-cream and the music and the not-quite-coconut-shy and the fortune-telling bovine have disappeared. Long, ghostly, string-like bodies come together.

"We have done well," they say.

"They learned to enjoy," they say.

"So goes the Planet of Requirement," they say.


End file.
